Despite court rulings
on June 19 that will halt Jurisline.com's use of case law and statute
databases derived from the Lexis Law on Disc CD-ROMs, Lee Eichen and Ken
Chow are planning to make their service "the little search engine that
could." Jurisline.com issued a press release dated June 20, 2000
announcing its plan to stay online and continue offering case law and
statute databases. According to the press release:

Jurisline will continue to offer fully
searchable cases and statutes from an expanding number of jurisdictions,
as well as full text searching on EDGAR filings, trademark searching,
continuing legal education information, corporate forms, legal links and
legal news.

Paragraph 3 of the
Final Judgment entered in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County
of New York, sets the date for cessation of use of the Lexis data as July 6,
2000. As of this morning, the service is still online and the case law
databases are still available.

I spoke with both Lee
Eichen and Ken Chow by telephone this morning and asked about their plans.
They said that following July 6 "there will be a transitional period in
which, obviously, the scope of our databases will be different" as to
the dates covered, "and then we will start to build coverage of earlier
cases." During the transitional period, Jurisline.com will offer
cases from publicly available sources such as state and federal court
websites. Eichen and Chow said, "There are a number of options
for obtaining cases from public sources. We are exploring the options,
but have not made a decision yet about which option to use."
Following the transitional period, again "there are a number of options
for obtaining earlier cases and we are exploring the options."

Both Eichen and Chow
were in good spirits and spoke in definite tones about their intention to
endure for the long term. They said the lawsuits had been absorbing
far too much of their time and that they settled the lawsuits so that they
could return their focus and energies to building the service.

Eichen and Chow
believe that even during the transitional period during which Jurisline.com
will offer only the more recent cases available from public sources, the
service will have value. They say Jurisline.com has concentrated on
the way information is presented and the capabilities of its search engine.
Though recent cases are publicly available at court and academic sites, they
are scattered across the web, have widely varying formats, and have either
no search engine or different and often weak search engines. Gathering
the cases from scattered sources, rendering them searchable at one location
through a single, powerful search engine, and displaying them in good form
will have value even if the files only go back to the early nineties.

While case law and
statute databases are important in Jurisline.com's service, Eichen and Chow
emphasized that other parts of the service are also important and continue
to offer value. "The EDGAR, trademark, legal news, continuing
legal education and other information provided are important parts of what
Jurisline.com is all about," they said.